Obama's presidency is probably
under-appreciated, and I have been one of those under-appreciating.
He's done a lot of good, he just doesn't crow about it much, thinks
it's not fitting, probably, thinks that people should notice without
being prompted. Good luck with that.
But I'm thinking now of two legacies
that won't go down so well in history, I'm afraid. One is in foreign
policy and one in domestic. First, foreign.
It's been hard to intervene or not
intervene, especially so after interventions were so poorly planned
and executed under hapless W. Kind of like the Vietnam Syndrome. I
keep harkening back to Ike. The 50's were a difficult time of duck
and cover. Ike was always harried by the Left to declare no first
use with nukes, and he wouldn't do it. No one thought he would
launch, but on the other hand, could you be sure? After all, there
was Dulles and the other harbingers of grief and destruction all
around him.
Well, it turns out there was a method
to his threateningness. The histories I read say that Ike knew what
he was doing. A military man, he was no militarist. He knew, for
instance, from his training with Fox Conner to only fight when you
have to, never fight alone, and never fight for long. (If only W had
known that!) As a military non-militarist President, and probably as
a Republican, he knew that money that went to the military didn't go
to domestic use (which is Trump's point, of course.) So if he
brandished nuclear weapons as a warning, others cringed, and he
didn't have to spend money on the costly stuff, which is soldiers.
So in the 50's we might have had to duck and cover, but we got
constant economic improvement and the interstate highway system. It
makes sense to threaten, not to use, and to listen to Fox Conner.
Iraq and Afghanistan made it hard for
Obama to threaten, because the country's wad had been shot. Hard –
but not impossible. A new hand was on deck, and he could have
threatened and not used. Where, you are wondering? (Maybe you are,
who knows?) Well, Syria. Syria is a major humanitarian disaster,
not dissimilar to Bill Clinton's Rwanda, the latter's biggest regret
for non-intervention. But also, unlike Rwanda, a geopolitical
disaster. What are the Russians doing in there? Why are they there,
I ask you? The Russians have never done anyone any good, sorry to
say, at least since they resisted the Nazis when they were attacked,
but if you look back in history, probably just never ever. They tend
to just be a marauding force. And the reason that they are actively
there in Syria, bombing opposition forces, is that Obama doesn't want
to fight them. This weekend when Kerry was accosted by Syrian
oppositionists in London, he said, “Do you want us to fight the
Russians?” Jesus, just give away the store, why don't you?
Preemptive surrender is not a great strategy.
The crucial time for the US in Syria
was the Red Line incident with chemical warfare. All we had to do
was to bomb the Damascus airfield. Few casualties. Debilitating the
Assad war effort. Threat of more to come. But instead, we got a
promise, admittedly fulfilled in the main, but not entirely, for no
more chemical warfare. The Russians were surprised, but they saw
what we were made of. They are now bombing all the opposition forces
around Aleppo and Syria will continue to be a strong ally of both
Russia and Iran, just what we need. Obama really screwed this up, I
think, even given a high degree of difficulty. Too cautious. Let
the other guy be cautious, why don't you?
The other thing that Obama really
screwed up is now showing up in enthusiasm for Trump and Sanders, and
difficulty for my chosen candidate, the very flawed Hillary Clinton.
(Anytime that Madeleine Albright becomes a major spokesperson, you
are in the deepest doo-doo, believe me. See Theo Le Sieg's Olivetta
Oppenbeam, in the classic book Hooper Humberdink, Not You – for any
parents or grandparents out there, this was the favorite book of
Peter and Budd Shenkin for years:
http://www.amazon.com/Hooper-Humperdink-Bright-Early-Books/dp/000171273X/ref=sr_1_10?ie=UTF8&qid=1455159143&sr=8-10&keywords=theo+le+sieg.)
What Obama screwed up was Eric Holder,
and associated issues. Not only were they deporters in chief, not
only were they firm opponents of transparency in government in many
ways including prosecuting investigative reporters doing their job,
but they really screwed up with prosecuting Wall Street after the
Great Recession. Why is no one significant in jail, or under great
clouds of disgrace? As is said, the government assiduously sought
the perpetrators of the Wall Street meltdown so they could hand them
additional billions. Maybe Dodd-Frank is better than they say it is,
maybe it is. I still think that reinstituting Glass-Steagall should
have been done, but maybe not, maybe Hillary is actually right that
another approach is needed. But what people see now, the straw that
broke the camel's back in inequality and plutocratic government, what
makes people think it's so obvious that Bernie and Trump are right,
that the government is bought and paid for, is that nobody went to
jail.
Nobody went to jail. How obvious can
it be? Reagan's administration sent people to jail for the savings
and loan scandal. The biggest winners so far in the campaigns are
the two candidates who say that government is bought and paid for,
and that someone should have gone to jail. And that's where Obama
screwed up domestically. Yes, it was hard. Yes, the SEC is
underfunded and undermanned and in its own way bought and paid for.
But behind it all is caution. Why was he so cautious? We can all
have our theories, and I'm sure we'll find out in time. But this was
no time for caution.
Government rests on the consent of the
governed, one way or another. They might be coerced into consent, or
they might be deluded into consent, or they may see their best
interests in the government and thus consent. It can come a lot of
different ways. But in this country, if you see inequality of
opportunity and of station increasingly pervasive, and then you see
gross malfeasance unpunished because they are plutocrats while some
kid smoking crack goes to jail for years, you are going to be led to
conclusions that some would rather you not have – like, for
instance, Hillary. For all her faults which are many, for all her
seduction by money – on the $650,000 for a few talks to Goldman
Sachs, her explanation was “That's what they offered,” like Bill
was offered something by someone named Monica – for all her lack of
hopey-changey, she could still be the best we can muster at this
time. But people look, and they see her taking the money, and they
hear all the things they hear, and they think – this game is
rigged, and the two people who are saying it are Trump and Sanders.
And this is the geopolitical and
domestic political legacy of Obama, so sorry to say, because I like
and admire the guy.
But maybe things will get better!
Here's hoping.
Budd Shenkin
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